I like a takeaway curry. Until a few months ago, I often went to my local curry house. However, it seems they had a health inspection and failed miserably. Not wishing to catch the bubonic plague from a chicken bhuna, I have avoided the place, until the hygiene rating is improved.
Saturday evening though, I was in desperate need of a curry, so, along with Simon and John, decided to go to The Shaad in Weston Village. This takeaway restaurant will only be a short walk from my new house and it has come highly recommended.
Whenever I go to a new curry house, I think the fairest way to compare it, is to judge a common dish available everywhere. The classic. The Chicken Tikka Masala. Chunks of chicken, soaked in a thick, red, slightly spicy, creamy sauce. It looks like bloody offal, but if cooked well, is delicious.
The Shaad’s offering was good. Very good. I will certainly be going back and next time, may be adventurous enough to try the balti!
After devouring my takeaway, I emptied the brown bag which it came in. The curry house’s answer to a party bag. Along with a paper hat, plastic toy and slice of birthday cake, it was full of the usual presents. A papadum. Strangely unpopular with many people, but I like them a lot. I ate my giant crisp for dessert. A frozen lemon full of sorbet would have been better, but I had no complaints. Then there is the customary pot of strange white fluid. Nobody knows what it really is. It nearly always ends up in the bin and this time was no exception. Last and by ALL means least is the small polythene bag full of lukewarm vegetables – again, whatever Indian restaurant or takeaway you visit in the world, your wonderful curry is always accompanied by a bag off this shit.
Overall, top marks for the curry, I always love papadums and would welcome a few more, but no need for the other free stuff.
The most suitable photo for an Indian takeaway I could find
I have come to the conclusion that my landlord has a voodoo doll. Not of me, but of my flat. Since advising of my imminent departure from the property, things have been going wrong – primarily with the bathroom sink. On Thursday night, the cold tap broke. It is completely knackered. You can spin it and it goes around and around and around. It makes a great spinning top, but you’ve got more chance of getting water from a stone in the desert. Never mind, I’m good at improvising. I’ll use the hot tap while brushing my teeth. True, I’ll risk third degree burns to my mouth and tongue, but I’m a daredevil and a menace to society – I just don’t give a shit!
Then, just two days later, the hot tap broke. I have no working taps in the bathroom. I know your typical bloke doesn’t wash his hands after going to the toilet, but as a rule, I like to clean myself after answering a call of nature. I was therefore left with the dilemma, wash my hands in the kitchen sink, which I thought was unhygienic in itself, or clean them under the shower. I chose the latter. Therefore, every time I piss or shit, I am forced to scrub my hands under a running shower. It is more difficult and messy than you could possibly imagine. Despite letting my agency know at the weekend, they still haven’t fixed it. The sooner I move out, the better!
This form of tap is about as useful as my bathroom tap
As part of my moving out routine, I am cancelling all kinds of utilities and services. The latest one I planned to chop was Love Film. When I signed up, you used to be able to cancel online. Now, to make things more difficult, you have to call them up. It was obvious the operator was reading from a script, because he clearly didn’t know how to handle my reason for leaving – “there is nothing left on Love Film that I want to rent”.
OK, I was lying. There is, of course, The Best Of Neighbours: The Defining Moments, which I’m yet to acquire. Who wouldn’t want to relive Karl Kennedy’s affair with Sarah, and Susan reminding him of it every episode for fifty years. Madge dying. That was sad. Julie Martin dying. That was funny. Then there’s Bouncer the dog, who caught rabies, bit Lou, before being shot by Harold. So many memories. Some of them true, some of them made up by me.
Enough about Neighbours, I called Love Film to cancel my subscription. To cut a long story short, I haven’t. Anyone who has seen that episode of Friends (a show I used to love as a teenager and now despise now I have grown up), when Chandler tries to cancel his gym membership, will know how difficult it is. Basically, I signed up with them for another 3 months. 3 months for the price of 1, mind. I just have to remember to cancel in November or dirty Love Film and their tax-dodgy parent company, Amazon, win.
Last night I was robbed. Robbed in my own home. Sadly, you won’t hear about this mugging on Crimewatch. It won’t even be reported in the local newspaper. This is because, apparently, there was no crime.
The perpetrator of the crime-which-wasn’t is BT, AKA ‘British Telecom’, or as I like to refer to them, ‘Bunch of Twats’.
With my house move taking place next month, I have spent the last couple of days cancelling/moving various contracts with utility companies I hold at my current property. All of whom have been very amicable. All apart from BT.
Ending a contract with BT is like telling a teenage-romance that a relationship is over. There are tears, begs of “I can change” and demands of explanations for the break up. Of course, all the emotion came from BT (I didn’t give a shit). Dry your eyes, mate. I know it’s hard to take but my mind has been made up. There’s plenty more fish in the sea.
Maybe the mugging came because I was cheeky. I firmly, but politely told the Scottish operator, “I know you have to do our job and ask the questions, but I really, really want to leave BT, and there is nothing you can say which will make me transfer the contract to my new property, so please don’t ask”. The Scottish operator still asked.
Once Agnes McFadden had finally accepted I was leaving and not coming back, she informed me that I owed BT £30. What for? Disconnecting my broadband, apparently. Presumably this is a big job, which can only be done by a specially trained expert, who will painstakingly spend hours removing me from the service. For that, the £30 would seem justifiable. Something tells me though, it just involves pressing a few buttons, which will probably be done by a seventeen year old, spotty apprentice.
Apparently this £30-thing was in the small print – well-hidden no doubt. I signed up for broadband in 2007 and when I asked Agnes for a copy of the contract from back then, I was told it was not available. Basically, they were taking £30 off me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Needless to say, I won’t be using or recommending BT. I won’t be using BT Sport, either. In fact, I hope BT Sport goes the way of ITV Digital.
Enjoy your £30, BT. How do you sleep at night?
1. Buy Euromillions ticket
2. Win Euromillions
3. Buy a corporate box at Elland Road
4. Convert corporate box into a flat, like this…
Somebody call Jim White and tell him to leave the pub and get his arse back to the Sky Sports News studio. There is news. Not just ordinary news. Not just big news. No, this news is BREAKING NEWS.
“So what is this breaking news?” I hear you all cry.
“Has Alex Ferguson been found guilty of match fixing, thus relegating Manchester United to the Evo-Stik League Division One North?”
“Is it the story of Luis Suarez snubbing Arsenal to join Bath City?”
“Tell us John Terry has been knighted for his services to British sport, after winning Wimbledon, The Tour de France and Ashes series single- handedly.”
While all three of these stories are of course true, there is bigger, far better news…
Claire and I now have a house together. After our offer for a property in Weston Village was accepted last week, as of today, the references have been cleared and we’re ready to go. I’ve even booked a man with a van (or ‘men with ven’, to give it the plural term), to move all my stuff!
There are still lots of things to be done, like cleaning, buying furniture, organising bank accounts and, most importantly, getting Sky installed, but we’re well on the way to moving into a home together.
I broke the news to my current letting agency this evening. They probably won’t read my email until next week and will take even longer to reply – mainly as their preferred means of communication is carrier pigeon.
One thing I am not looking forward to is trying to get my deposit back. Considering I have lived in flat for over 6 years, I have done well to keep it in one piece and not demolished/burnt/flooded. Banning Simon from taking red wine into the property certainly helped. Removing all flammable material and matches from the flat while I listened to Leeds United games on the radio also kept pyromania-related incidents to a minimum. I just hope they don’t notice the cider stain on the kitchen wall. Blame that little accident on a very gassy alcoholic beverage, a glass bottle which had been shaken up and a magnetic bottle opener attached to the fridge.
The dead squirrel on Newbirdge Hill was gone this morning. I can only assume it was taken by a chef, probably Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, to cook a divine feast of sautéed squirrel, chanterelle mushrooms and autumn vegetables.
The cheap bastard. At least buy your meat from a reputable butcher. He didn’t even leave flowers on the roadside for the poor departed creature.
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
